Time travel Tuesday #timetravel a look back at the Adafruit, maker, science, technology and engineering world

15 Eunomia is a very large asteroid in the inner asteroid belt. It is the largest of the stony (S-type) asteroids, and somewhere between the 8th-to-12th-largest main-belt asteroid overall (uncertainty in diameters causes uncertainty in its ranking). It is the largest Eunomian asteroid, and is estimated to contain 1% of the mass of the asteroid belt.

Eunomia was discovered by Annibale de Gasparis on July 29, 1851 and named after Eunomia, one of the Horae (Hours), a personification of order and law in Greek mythology.

Vladimir Kosmich Zworykin was a Russian-American inventor, engineer, and pioneer of television technology. Zworykin invented a television transmitting and receiving system employing cathode ray tubes. He played a role in the practical development of television from the early thirties, including charge storage-type tubes, infrared image tubes and the electron microscope.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is an international organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons. The IAEA was established as an autonomous organization on 29 July 1957. Though established independently of the United Nations through its own international treaty, the IAEA Statute, the IAEA reports to both the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council.

The IAEA has its headquarters in Vienna, Austria. The IAEA has two “Regional Safeguards Offices” which are located in Toronto, Canada, and in Tokyo, Japan. The IAEA also has two liaison offices which are located in New York City, United States, and in Geneva, Switzerland. In addition, the IAEA has three laboratories located in Vienna and Seibersdorf, Austria, and in Monaco.

The IAEA serves as an intergovernmental forum for scientific and technical cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear technology and nuclear power worldwide. The programs of the IAEA encourage the development of the peaceful applications of nuclear technology, provide international safeguards against misuse of nuclear technology and nuclear materials, and promote nuclear safety (including radiation protection) and nuclear security standards and their implementation.

The IAEA and its former Director General, Mohamed ElBaradei, were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on 7 October 2005. The IAEA’s current Director General is Yukiya Amano.

The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 is the United States federal statute that created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The Act, which followed close on the heels of the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik, was drafted by the United States House Select Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration and on July 29, 1958 was signed by President Eisenhower. Prior to enactment, the responsibility for space exploration was deemed primarily a military venture, in line with the Soviet model that had launched the first orbital satellite. In large measure, the Act was prompted by the lack of response by a US military infrastructure that seemed incapable of keeping up the space race.

Eris (minor-planet designation 136199 Eris) is the most massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the ninth most massive body known to directly orbit the Sun. It is estimated to be 2,326 (±12) km in diameter, and 27% more massive than Pluto, or about 0.27% of the Earth’s mass.

Eris was discovered in January 2005 by a Palomar Observatory-based team led by Mike Brown, and its identity was verified later that year. It is a trans-Neptunian object (TNO) and a member of a high-eccentricity population known as the scattered disc. It has one known moon, Dysnomia. As of 2014, its distance from the Sun is 96.4 AU, roughly three times that of Pluto. With the exception of some comets, Eris and Dysnomia are currently the most distant known natural objects in the Solar System.

Because Eris appeared to be larger than Pluto, its discoverers and NASA initially described it as the Solar System’s tenth planet. This, along with the prospect of other similarly sized objects being discovered in the future, motivated the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to define the term planet for the first time. Under the IAU definition approved on August 24, 2006, Eris is a “dwarf planet”, along with objects such as Pluto, Ceres, Haumea and Makemake. However, observations of a stellar occultation by Eris in 2010 showed that its diameter was only 2326±12 km, not significantly different from the size of Pluto. Given the uncertainties in their size estimates, there is a reasonable chance that Eris is actually smaller than Pluto. However, Pluto’s atmosphere makes determining its diameter difficult, and until the New Horizons probe arrives at Pluto the diameter is expected to remain unknown. Because of that, many scientists expect the question of the relative sizes of Eris and Pluto to remain unanswered until then.